In my last column, I made my case for how the popular music of my younger years – I turned 66 at the dawn of 2020 – was of a higher quality than that of today. Now I address a corollary aspect of that: Do I even need new music to listen to any more?
Understand that this question is one I would have considered unimaginable in many earlier decades. Since not long after I became conscious of the larger world around me, I was ardent about whatever was the latest in popular music. I would rate my passion for the newest and next just shy of obsessive and a major skein in my life well into my 40s. Following where popular music was going and hearing the latest was as essential to my existence as eating every day. It was something I lived for.
Fortunately for me, I managed to create a “do what you love” career, if not life, for myself. From the mid-’70s into the early ‘80s, a vast majority of the new popular music that was released arrived at my door in the mail. I chuckle as I recall my mother asking me during the summer between my high-school graduation and freshman year of college why every Friday I would get my paycheck and immediately head to the local record store. I was later able to point out that it was an investment in my career path. And how what I did, at least for a while, manage to eliminate the cost of keeping up with the latest music. Plus, I must confess, even earn some extra cash by now heading to local record stores to sell the promo copies of albums I didn’t want to hold onto.
The fact that I no longer get promo mailings – the one exception to that is Sony Music’s Legacy label, which actually releases a fair proportion of music that I actually still wish to hear and write about – doesn’t much bother me. Let’s face it: There’s not much music I feel the need to hear. And these days many releases to the media are downloads. Plus I can listen to most of what I might want to hear on Spotify. And when I check the list of new releases on Spotify, there’s very little I feel compelled to check out.
I’ll attribute my lack of interest much less to a function of age than how popular music has changed. I’m happy to admit that many of the artists who release new music are not making their music for me. And that’s OK. Plus even so, sometimes I listen to such contemporary acts just to see what they are up to. And at times am happily surprised by how much I do like what I hear, such as in the case of the most recent album by Taylor Swift.
But I could altogether stop listening to new music and still find much that’s new to me, ie. that I have yet to hear. The output of a truly classic artist, such as Frank Sinatra, is so considerable that I am sure there are gems for me to discover. In the realm of traditional artists, there are many early and obscure acts whose work I will enjoy. I’ve always been a fan of jazz, but hardly consider myself an expert. So there’s much out there in that genre – especially in the 1950s into ‘60s bebop movement I enjoy immensely – that I can find and savor. Plus, obscure older R&B. World Music, especially that of Africa and also the Caribbean and South America. And delve more into classical composers.
There’s also acts from my salad years of music listening – 1960s through the ‘80s – that I know of and have heard a bit from but can listen to more and more deeply. And even when I listen to quite a few acts I know and even favorites that, after all these years of developing my music listening skills, that I hear aspects and nuances that are help me hear even music I know well in ways that are anew.
Yes, I do miss that shiver-down-the-spine “wow” that comes from hearing music that’s indeed new. But I can now live without it and have most all of my listening desires satisfied.
Album: Sound and Fury by Sturgill Simpson – He’s been one of the finest and most interesting country neo-traditionalists of recent years, winning the Best Country Album Grammy with his last release. But there’s nothing country at all about his newest, that takes a bunch of left field turns into synth pop, modern dance club music (with more synthesizer), ZZ Top-style boogie rock (with even more synth). Nonetheless, this is not just an interesting album but also a quite catchy and appealing one.
TV Series: “On Becoming a God in Central Florida” – This Kirsten Dunst vehicle skewers multi-level marketing scams and white trash life in the Sunshine State with an appealing black humor and absurdity.
Rob Patterson is a music and entertainment writer in Austin, Texas. Email orca@prismnet.com.
From The Progressive Populist, April 15, 2020
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